HOLLAND, COUNTY AND PROVINCE OF). He had no equal in the art of political management, and few in that of international diplo macy; but with these he combined higher gifts. His intellectual distinction, his broad and deep political knowledge, entitle him to be called the most scientific statesman of his time. His ap pointment came during the course of the first English war. The commercial and colonial rivalry with England had been growing hotter all through the century. In the year 1651 it reached boiling-point. The Dutch had declined far-reaching proposals of alliance from the new sister-republic and Orange partisans had insulted the ambassadors of the regicides. The English navy, in stamping out royalist resistance, interfered with Dutch com merce. The celebrated Navigation Act inflicted, or rather was meant to inflict, a severe blow on the Dutch carrying trade. The war was fought entirely at sea. It lasted from May 1652 to April 1654, in which time there were 12 fleet actions. This evenly balanced fighting was something new in naval history; the Dutch commanders, Tromp (killed Aug. Io, 1653), and de Ruyter, did wonders, as did the Englishmen, Blake and Monk. Dutch com merce suffered enormously. In the end the English had the upper hand, and the Protestant idealist Cromwell, now Protector, had no wish to continue the war. In the Treaty of Westminster (April 5, 1654), the Dutch agreed to pay compensation for the East Indian claims and to make the formal acknowledgment of the British sovereignty of the narrow seas by saluting with the flag. Another condition was added, since the States General re fused to accept it, in a secret treaty which the States of Holland under de Witt's influence made as a separate sovereign state. In this Holland was pledged to the Act of Seclusion, by which the prince of Orange, in despite of popular opinion, was to be ex cluded from the office of stadholder. Baltic affairs next gave trouble. The trade there was of great importance to the Dutch, and was adversely affected by the war between Sweden and Den mark (1657-6o). By a skilful use of force and diplomacy John de Witt, in concert with France and England, imposed a settle ment. The expulsion of the Dutch from Brazil had led to war with Portugal in 1657, but this too was satisfactorily terminated in 1661. Meanwhile, Charles II. had been restored, and to con ciliate him de Witt, secured the repeal of the Act of Seclusion. The dynastic question was however subordinate. It was in an alliance not with England but with France (1662) that the Dutch put their trust. Parliament re-enacted and strengthened the Navigation Act. Dutch posts on the West Coast of Africa were seized (1664) in time of peace; the colony of New Netherland was seized soon afterwards and its capital New Amsterdam re named New York after James, duke of York. The second Eng lish war broke out in 1665. This too was an obstinately con tested sea-war. The land operations were insignificant, but it differed from the first war in that it was not a mere duel, the English having as an ally the bishop of Munster, against whom the Dutch were aided by the French, in accordance with the alliance of 1662. The general result was less favourable to the English, and negotiations were already in progress when the Dutch made their memorable raid on the Medway and burnt the British fleet where it had been unwisely laid up in harbour. Naturally they had the better of the treaty. True, New Nether land was handed over in exchange for Surinam and Run ; but it may be doubted whether it could have had much future under the Dutch. The commercial and maritime clauses included con cessions by the English. In the following year de Witt and Sir William Temple negotiated the triple alliance of England, Hol land and Sweden. The purpose of this was to force a peace upon Louis XIV., who in 1667 had invaded the Spanish Netherlands and now was making dangerous progress. In later days, when England and Holland stood side by side against French ambition, the alliance was famous as an anticipation of their policy; but its immediate consequences were far from splendid. Louis did indeed make peace, for which he had other sufficient reasons, but he kept it for no more than four years, and he spent those years in preparing the way for a new war of aggression in which the Spanish Netherlands were still the ultimate objective, but the direct enemy was the Dutch republic, which had taken upon itself to be their friend. Louis' diplomacy isolated the Dutch com pletely. Charles II. sold himself cheap by the Treaty of Dover (167o); neither to Sweden nor to Spain, nor to any among the German states, could the republic look for support. John de Witt with all his foresight had not done enough. The fleet was strong and well-equipped, but, from jealousy of its Orange sympathies the oligarchs had neglected the army. By 1672 Louis was ready. He moved against the eastern frontier in apparently overwhelm ing force. The English picked a quarrel over the salute to the flag and, before declaring war, attacked a Dutch merchant fleet in the Channel.
For the next 4o years Dutch history turned on the struggle against France. William, though not the equal of the French marshals who opposed him, was the most resolute man in Europe. In the field he never admitted defeat, and in diplomacy he seldom met it. Before the end of 1673 the direct danger to the existence of the Dutch republic was ended. Brandenburg, the emperor and Spain were induced to declare war against France. William was able to come out and surprise the Rhine fortress of Bonn, thus threatening the enemy's communications. In 1674 the land war made no great headway, but at sea the English, among whom a powerful section were unfriendly to Louis, had had enough. The Treaty of Westminster (Feb. 14) provided for the restoration of all conquests. Before very long Charles found it to his interest to work for a time with the anti-French party, and the improve ment in the republic's military and diplomatic situation was signally shown by the marriage (1677) of William to Mary, the elder daughter of Charles's heir presumptive, the duke of York. The bridegroom had still his war to finish, but the years had been tolerably successful at sea, though not in the principal theatre, and negotiations were already in progress. They termi nated by the general settlement of Nijmwegen (Aug. 1678), in which, though it marked the greatest extent of Louis's conquests, the Dutch surrendered nothing. Ten years elapsed before the next war between Holland and France, and in contrast with the period before 1672 they ended with the almost complete isolation of Louis XIV. England remained an uncertain factor until 1688, when the clumsiness of James and Louis, the generous patriotism of the Dutch regents, including those of Amsterdam, and the genius of William brought about one of the decisive events of modern times. William and Mary became king and queen of England (see FRANCE: History; ENGLISH HISTORY). In Holland this greatly raised William's authority, which in no way suffered from his frequent absences in his kingdom. He still had to contend with the particularism of the regents in Amsterdam and elsewhere, but his mastery of Dutch political devices was equal to that of John de Witt, and he exercised a less restricted power as stadholder of Holland than as king of England. In the war he was undisputed head of the Allies. Holland's part was sub ordinate to that of England, and she suffered both by sea and land only less severely than in the earlier wars of the century; but by the peace of Ryswyk (1697) she gained, besides the indirect benefit of William's recognition as king, a favourable commercial treaty. Afterwards she garrisoned a number of "bar rier fortresses" in the Spanish Netherlands. This barrier policy was, however, unsound. The mercantile Dutch did not desire an extension of frontiers but trusted to making themselves safe in the south, as they had already done in the east, by maintaining gar risons which should shore up the resistance of buffer-states, strong enough to serve for defence but too weak to be dangerous. In the great war of the Spanish Succession, which began soon after William's death in 1702 and was a continuation, with still greater stakes, of the last war, one weakness of this scheme at once became apparent. Spain was now in alliance with France, and the garrisons could not hold on in what had thus become an unfriendly country.
William's death began a second "stadholderless period" which lasted until 1i47. In 1672 the stadholdership in his five provinces had been declared hereditary, but William died childless and the jealousy of Holland prevented the appointment of his cousin, the stadholder of Friesland and Groningen. The evils of this dis union were, however, mitigated by the statesmanship of Antonie Heinsius (council-pensionary 1689-172o), and the duke of Marl borough (deputy captain-general and British ambassador at The Hague) who carried on the tradition of William III. After the fall of Marlborough, however, a treaty settlement was made (1713-15) which disappointed Dutch expectations. Small patches of territory on the Meuse were gained. In the southern Nether lands, now handed over by Spain to Austria, a barrier was con ceded less advantageous than had been promised by the English during the course of the war.
The finances of the republic were exhausted. From this time it was no longer one of the Great Powers; but its geographical situation, and the wars of its great neighbours, England and France, made international politics the ruling factor in its destiny. Economic decline began to set in seriously towards the middle of the 18th century, so that the political influence of the Dutch was further diminished. They supported the Hanoverian dynasty in England by sending troops when it was in danger, but they fol lowed in general a policy of peace and abstention from European complications. In 1723-31 they departed from this in order to obtain the suppression of the East India Company, which the Emperor, Charles VI., had set up at Ostend in the Austrian Netherlands, a competitor which might have undone much of the advantage gained by the Dutch from the closing of the Scheldt (see OSTEND COMPANY). In exchange for this suppres sion they guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, by which Maria Theresa was to succeed to all the hereditary dominions of her father, Charles VI., and therefore they were unable to avoid joining, in 1743, in the war of the Austrian succession. They were now, as in 1689-1713, in alliance with the English and Austrians against the French, but they confined their help to unimportant contingents and subsidies. The French under Marshal Saxe made short work of the Austrian Netherlands and the barrier fortresses. After holding back in the hope that the Dutch would be neutral, they marched in 1747 into the defenceless Dutch territory south of the Scheldt, Dutch Flanders. Then followed a parody of the revolution of 1672. Popular opinion everywhere demanded a stadholder who should save the country as it had been saved by William III. The man marked out by fate was William IV., prince of Orange, and already stadholder of Friesland, Groningen and Gelderland and the son-in-law of George II. of England.
He was the grandson of that cousin of William III. who had been stadholder of the northern provinces. Some English men-of-war in port in Orangist Zeeland gave the first impulse to a swift and bloodless revolution, by which he became stadholder of the re maining provinces and captain and admiral general of the Union. Before long his offices were declared hereditary. He was an elo quent speaker and a believer in constitutional legality, but he lacked all the qualities of the man of action. His high hopes of effective Dutch exertions in the war came to nothing; even in the making of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 he had no influence. He and still more his adviser, Willem Bentinck van Rhoon, saw the need for reform in the system of taxation and the machinery of government; but they could not overcome the slackness and obstructiveness of the regents. By the time of William's death (Oct. 22, 1751) nothing remained of the dreams of a revived republic strongly led by a stadholder in the old alliance with Austria and England. In the Seven Years' War (1756-63) the republic remained neutral. After the death in 1759 of William's English widow, Anne, the States were regents for her son who was declared to be of age in 1766. William V. was a man of the feeblest character, ruled by his spirited wife, Frederica Wilhelmina of Prussia. In the American War of Inde pendence he favoured the English ; most of the Dutch people sympathized with the rebellious colonists. It was, however, the interference of the British with neutral shipping which brought the Dutch into their fourth English war. By a majority of four provinces to three the States General decided to join the "Armed Neutrality," the combination promoted by Catherine II. of Russia (178o). The war which ensued was an unrelieved disaster. Party strife paralysed every organ of the State, and, though a stout fight was put up in the indecisive naval action of the Dogger Bank (178o), the Dutch could not hinder the English from taking possession of all their shipping and all their colonies. In the Treaty of Paris (1784), deserted by their allies, they had to give up Negapatam in southern India and grant the English the right of navigating through the Moluccas. The eco nomic effects of the war had been disastrous.
Perhaps undeservedly but not unnaturally it was the stadholder and his party who were blamed for these humiliations, and the strongest element in the republic for the next few years was that of the successors of the old "states party." These were the "Patriots," liberals inspired by French philosophical ideas and politically inclined to France. They used their power to hamper and limit that of the stadholder. In 1784 the emperor, Joseph II., took advantage of these dissensions to announce his intention of opening the Scheldt, and the Dutch had no means of averting this except by the payment of a heavy compensation. But the Patriots went too far, and the opponents of France were de termined not to lose their chances of controlling Dutch policy through the house of Orange. Sir James Harris, the British ambassador, had long been preparing a stroke. In 1787 the king of Prussia, on the pretext of an insult offered to his niece, dispatched an army of invasion. Amsterdam capitulated, the Patriots were driven from office and William V. was restored.
This might have been the prelude to fundamental reforms had not Dutch history been projected into a new era by the French revolution. In 1792 the French threw open the Scheldt, as Joseph II. had threatened to do. They declared war on George III. of England in the following year, and they were merely registering the results of 1787 when they included the prince of Orange in the declaration. The course of events in the war and in France protected the Dutch until the winter of when the army of Pichegru swept all before it, even the fleet being captured in the Texel by cavalry which crossed the ice. William V. and his family fled to England. All the characteristic institutions of the antiquated republic were done away with, and the French and patriots together organized the Batavian republic on the French model (1795-98). The Dutch soon found what it was to be a client-state of France. The English seized all their colonies, shut up all their shipping and at Camperdown (1797) destroyed their navy. Constitutions, growing less democratic, followed one an other as in France. At the peace of Amiens England restored the Cape of Good Hope and the West Indian colonies, only to occupy them anew when war was resumed in 1803. In 1805 Napoleon imposed a new constitution and Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck took the leading place with the title of council-pensionary. In the next year, however, the French emperor sent his brother Louis to Holland to rule it as a king. Louis, particularly in the matter of the continental system, put his subjects' interests before his master's: hence in 1810 he had to abdicate. The country was incorporated in the French empire and had to pay its share of men and money for Napoleon's costly last campaigns.
When Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig in 1813 there was a general rising of the Netherlands. The prince of Orange, the son of William V., who had died in exile, hastened back and, amid general enthusiasm, accepted at Amsterdam (Dec. 1813) the title of sovereign prince. The drafting of a constitution was begun. Next year the powers victorious over Napoleon decided to set up, as a bulwark against the French a state uniting all the Netherlands, divided since 1579, together with the bishopric of Liege and the little duchy of Bouillon. At its head was Orange with the title of William I., king of the Netherlands (q.v.). His share in the German inheritance of the Nassau family was ex changed for Luxembourg, of which he became grand duke, thus bringing it into a personal union with his kingdom. When Napo leon returned from the hundred days, the king's son and heir, now called prince of Orange, at the head of the Dutch troops, won distinction at Quatre Bras and at Waterloo, where he was wounded. King William's coronation at Brussels on Sept. 27, 1815, inaugurated a new era, which had its own problems, but in which those of the older history of the country were finally settled by national unity under a hereditary monarchy.
Dutch public opinion had taken little interest in the great work that had been done in the south for Dutch civilization. It made no distinction between Flemings and Walloons, and when the revolution broke out it embraced all Belgians in the same resent ment, and while largely responding in 1831 to the king's call for an invasion of Belgium in order to obtain better terms of separation, the Dutch people were relieved that the union had come to an end. At the time of the restoration the Dutch people shaken by the vicissitudes of the "French period" and impoverished by the loss of trade had entrusted their interests to William of Orange with the confidence of exhaustion. The years of union with Bel gium are marked by an absence of interest in public affairs, sur prising on the part of a people with the political tradition of the Dutch. When the Belgian opposition began to ask, ever more insistently, for ministerial responsibility and similar reforms, the Dutch had only supported the government with greater docility. Events after 1831 brought about a change in this attitude.
It had become clear almost at once after the insurrection of the southern provinces that no help was to be expected from the powers (which 16 years before had helped to form the united Netherlands kingdom) to coerce the rebels back under the sover eignty of William I. The attention of Russia, Prussia and Austria, was soon distracted by an insurrection in Poland, while England, especially after the formation of the Whig cabinet in November, was anxious to settle the whole question in amicable consultation with France. The international conference which met in London at the request of William I. to discuss the matter had, on De cember 20, 1830, pronounced the dissolution of the kingdom. The principles of separation which it laid down a month later were not inacceptable to Dutch opinion, but in June–July 1831 the conference drew up the so called eighteen articles, which differed essentially from the Bases of January and which Holland re jected. When Leopold I. accepted them, William I., denounced the armistice and in the ten days' campaign the Dutch army routed the Belgians and withdrew only when a French army ap peared on the scene. The demonstration was not without effect. The conference again altered its verdict and the twenty-four articles (Oct. 1831) were much more favourable to Holland. But William I. refused to accept them, ostensibly on account of the loss of part of Luxemburg, in reality because he had not given up hope of recovering the lost provinces. It was not until March 1838 that he intimated his readiness to accept the twenty-four articles ; and more than a year later the definitive treaty of separation between Holland and Belgium was signed at London and guaranteed in a collective treaty by the five Powers.
The treaty left to Holland the ancient territory of the Dutch republic with the addition of a strip of land along the Maas in order to connect the old enclaves of Maastricht and Venlo with the body of the country. It was as a compensation for this strip of land that the king in his capacity of Grand Duke ceded the Wal loon part of Luxemburg to Belgium. The Belgians undertook to share the burden of the public debt of the defunct kingdom. The Scheldt was declared to be free to international navigation and Holland undertook to maintain its navigability. (See also BEL GIUM.) Constitutional Reform.—The obstinacy with which King William had maintained his "system of persistence" from 1831 to 1838 had greatly embarrassed Dutch finances and had roused Dutch public opinion against the system of irresponsible govern ment which in 1814 had been accepted without a murmur. The Government had been able to finance the protracted mobilization only by drawing largely on the colonies. Here the so-called "cul tures-system" had been introduced by Van den Bosch who had first been governor-general, then minister of the colonies. This system really meant a return to the principles of the Dutch East India company; under it the Dutch Government asserted a monopoly for trading in agricultural articles obtained by forced labour on a large scale. The Netherlands Trading Company which the king had founded in 1824 and in which he had a considerable personal interest, was drawn into the service of the government cultures, and both through it and directly, the State made enormous annual profits. Altogether, these financial transactions which the consti tution by committing the government of the colonies to the king's sole care shielded from the control of the chambers, evoked much criticism and intensified the demand for a revision of the constitu tion. In 1840 a revision was undertaken, which, in addition to certain further not very important changes, brought colonial finance under the competence of the chambers. A few weeks after wards the king abdicated.
Under William II., the drastic fiscal measures necessary to avoid a public bankruptcy were forced through by Van Hall but at the same time it appeared that the revision of 1840 had by no means satisfied liberal opinion, and the agitation for a further strengthening of the power of the States-General continued.
The leader of liberal thought in the country was J. R. Thor becke, professor of constitutional law at Leyden and member of the second chamber. In 1844 he with eight other liberal members introduced a bill for further revision. In the chamber, elected on a narrow property basis, there was no majority for his ideas, but instructed middle class opinion outside was largely with him. Yet when in 1848 the Government suddenly moved in his direction, it was impelled by the revolutionary events in France and Germany rather than by any immediate menace in the country itself.
It was largely the personal action of the highly-strung king which caused the victory of the liberal ideas to be so complete. Thorbecke's was the ruling mind in the royal commission which elaborated the new constitution, but his domineering and some what pedantic temper brought him many enemies and kept him out of the ministries formed in that eventful year. The largely con servative States-General dared not block the way when the king himself led the forces of progress, and in Oct. 1848 the new con stitution came into force, under which full ministerial responsi bility, complete control by the States-General of public finance and of colonial administration, direct elections, freedom of meet ing, and many other features characteristic of the liberal parlia mentary system of government were introduced.
Thorbecke's first ministry (he was again at the head of the Government from 1862 to 1866 and died shortly after the forma tion of his third cabinet in 1872) produced a great record of legis lative achievements. The liberal State, postulated in the new constitution, was realised by means of organic laws, regulating the electoral system, provincial and municipal administration. A navigation act did away with differential treatment of Dutch ship ping, a first step in the direction of complete free trade. The impulse given by Thorbecke lost much of its force after his resig nation in 1853. In his second ministry it was especially the colonial question that claimed attention. Van den Bosch's "cultures sys tem," the profits of which had become hardly less dear to the hearts of parliamentary governments than they had been to the autocratic king, was attacked both on account of the hardships it meant to the native populations and in the name of liberal economics : "free labour" was advocated in the interests of the Javanese and of Dutch capitalists alike. On this point Thorbecke and his more radical colonial minister, Fransen van de Putte differed, and it was not until 187o that the "cultures system" was abolished; only government cultures of coffee were maintained for a further number of years.
The Catholics had long supported the Liberal Party, to whose political progenitors, the Patriots, they owed possession since of full citizens rights, and whose victory in 1848 had enabled them to organise their church again. After the outburst of Protestant fury in 1853, Thorbecke had found a constituency in the Catholic South (at Maastricht). The formation of the kingdom of Italy, Pius IX.'s challenge of liberal principles, and the rise of ultra montanism disturbed these friendly relations. The Catholics were organised in a separate party and as they numbered about one third of the total population, this party was bound to be a power ful one. Its views on the education question soon brought it into active opposition to the Liberals and at the same time brought about an alliance with another party, which in the past had always been its chief enemy.
Calvinism had suffered a long eclipse. In the first decades of the 19th century the prevailing tone in religious life was "liberal" and "enlightened." Among the people the old doctrines lingered on, and in the '3os there had been a Calvinist secession from the Re formed Church, which William I., imbued with Napoleonic "etatism" and erastianism, had vainly tried to dragoon back to conformity. At the same time, a religious revival, influenced by Swiss Huguenots (hence its French name: the Revell), and com parable to evangelicanism in England, had affected a number of men and women in other classes of society. To this group be longed Groen van Prinsterer, who attempted to apply orthodox protestant principles to politics. He effected a contact between the new anti-revolutionary idealism and the old popular Calvinism, and through sheer force of personality he was able to appear as Thorbecke's chief opponent in the chamber, the bearer of a prin ciple to which Liberalism had to define its attitude. It was only after his death in 1876 however, that, helped by the political awakening and enfranchisement of the lower classes, and by pool ing forces with the Roman Catholic Party, the new leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, Dr. Abraham Kuyper, could under mine the Liberal ascendancy until, at length, in Igoe, it crashed.
It was the education question that made the Calvinist-Catholic coalition possible. Holland had possessed a national elementary school system since 1806. The constitution of 1848 laid down that the Government was to give constant care to it and to see that public elementary instruction was available in all parts of the kingdom. According to an act passed in 1857, the public elemen tary school was to educate the child to "all social and Christian virtues," a provision which it was hoped would meet the objec tion of the orthodox to the "neutral," or as they said, the "god less," character of the State schools. It did nothing of the sort, and when in 1878, the Liberals under Kappeyne van de Coppello strengthened the Act of 1857 without making any concessions to the religious scruples of orthodox Protestants and Catholics, the agitation was doubled in intensity. It was urged that to make these groups of the population pay towards the upkeep of State schools to which conscience forbade them sending their children so that they had to pay again for the upkeep of private denomina tional schools was the height of unfairness, and it was proposed that the State should give financial support to privately managed denominational schools as well. This demand was strenuously resisted by the Liberals, and the constitution, by committing public elementary instruction to the Government's especial care, undoubtedly made it difficult to go very far in the direction of state support for denominational education. The constitution could be altered only by the two-thirds vote of a specially elected States General. So the first coalition (Anti-Revolutionary cum Catholic) ministry, 1887-91, could only make a modest beginning with the subsidizing of denominational schools, which did not at all satisfy their followers.
The Franchise.—The coalition majority in 1887 was the direct outcome of an extension of the franchise which increased the num ber of electors from 140,000 to 300,000, in a population of 4,400, 000. The Liberal Party had failed to adapt itself to the new circumstances. In 1889 there was a secession from the Liberal Party to found a Radical Party. The rump nevertheless evolved tendencies too radical to the taste of some, who seceded in 1894 and formed a Free Liberal Party. The multiplication of groups has ever since characterized Dutch parliamentary life. Another Party had meanwhile made its appearance. In 1887 the first Socialist was elected to the second chamber. The growth of the Socialist Party was at first slow, not only because of internal dis sensions, but also because Holland was still a not very strongly industrialized country. Moreover, the bulk of the working-class population was still without the vote. The new franchise act of 1896 carried by Van Houten, a member of the Liberal Cabinet, increased the number of voters to 577,000 but this was still far removed from universal suffrage. It was again the constitution that blocked the way, but the failure of the Liberal Party to solve the question in a bold fashion alienated working class sympathies from it. Yet shortly before its final fall from power, the Liberals produced a cabinet that firmly tackled the social legislation which many considered to be long overdue. Workmen's insurance against accidents, improvement of housing conditions, compulsory education for children from six to twelve, were all measures car ried by the Goeman Borgesius ministry between 1897 and 1901.
Progress.—A very great change had by this time taken place in the economic and intellectual life of the country. Holland had been very slow in recovering from the exhaustion which the in terruption of overseas trade during the "French period" had caused. The working class population of the towns remained poor, capital cautious and unenterprising, the whole tone of so ciety middle class and dull. In the universities theology and phil ology still flourished; Beets and Potgieter, Busken Huet and Douwes Dekker (Multatuli) were writers of real distinction; the Hague school of painters in the '6os and '7os produced work of lasting value. Yet on the whole Dutch life was narrow and un inspired, and with the exception of the first named, the writers mentioned felt profoundly dissatisfied and criticized often with an almost despairing bitterness. In the last quarter of the century however, hope for the future was born afresh. The rapid economic development of Germany and especially of the industrial districts on the Rhine after 1870 was an important factor in this process. It enabled Rotterdam to grow into a port of the first magnitude. But the national revival manifested itself in many ways. Amster dam was given good access to the sea by the construction of the North sea Canal to Ymuiden (1865-76). Rotterdam, too, got its New Waterway (1866-71) . Lakes were turned into land, waste grounds were reclaimed. In Twente and North Brabant textile industries grew up, while along the rivers shipbuilding yards in creased in numbers. The Dutch merchant fleet, too, began to grow rapidly. Economic development and increasing prosperity reacted on politics. The new vitality of the Socialist movement as well as the democratic tendencies of the Anti-Revolutionary and Catholic Parties, and generally the vigour with which social reconstruction was debated and undertaken, were largely attributable to the pass ing of material stagnation. Literature, too, in the '8os entered upon a period remarkable for enthusiasm and faith in the future no less than for brilliant achievements. In fact the promise of the Nieuwe Gids movement was hardly fulfilled, although especially in the domain of poetry Dutch literature has been permanently en riched by it and the language and the spirit of the nation were pro foundly stimulated. In the universities nothing perhaps was more noteworthy than the revival of scientific studies which was to bear its richest fruit a little later and in the loth century.
Achin.—In the sphere of colonial government, too, a new spirit began to make itself felt as the 19th century approached its close. One expedition after another was undertaken to bring regions which had so far been only nominally parts of the Dutch empire under effective control. The war with Achin, which had dragged on since 1873 was brought to a close by General Van Heutz who, when shortly afterwards (1904) he was made Governor-General, directed the last and most energetic stage of this forward move ment in the whole of the Archipelago. At the same time, while the resources of the islands were developed by capitalistic enter prise, the Government began to display a more active care for the economic and intellectual welfare of the Indian peoples.
Heemskerk was the leading member of this Government which was somewhat too moderate in its religious policy for the more fanatical Kuyperians, whose zeal for social reform was gratified by the grandiose scheme for state disability and old age insurance on which the minister of labour, Talma, worked strenuously. The scheme, however, had not yet been carried into effect when the defeat of the Coalition at the polls in 1913 hung it up indefinitely.
The parties of the Left proved unable, in 1913, to assume the responsibilities of government. The once powerful Liberal Party was now broken up into several sections; moreover, the Socialist Party now claimed a large proportion of the forces of the Left, and there was little sympathy between it and the so-called Free Liberals. An attempt was made, nevertheless, to form a coalition of the Left, under Dr. Bos, the Radical leader, on a programme that included universal suffrage. The Free Liberals agreed to this programme, but the Socialists, although their leader, P. J. Troelstra, was in favour of accepting, refused to co-operate.
In this difficulty an extra-parliamentary cabinet was formed by Cort van der Linden. In conformity with the verdict of the electors it bore a decidedly "Left" character, but it attempted to find final solutions for both the questions which had long paralysed Dutch political life. Cort van der Linden and his colleagues pro posed to bring about a revision of the constitution (for which purpose a two-thirds majority of the chamber is required) by an agreement of all parties. In it the Clerical groups would find the solution of the school problem and the Liberals, Radicals and Socialists the final extension of the suffrage.
Although faced with the problems arising out of the World War, the Government persevered with this task, and indeed the quickened sense of national solidarity helped it rather than other wise. In 1917 its programme was carried out. Universal suffrage and proportional representation were introduced; at the same time, the principle of absolute equality with regard to the public ex chequer of "public" undenominational education, and "private" denominational education, was conceded in full and written in the Constitution.
Although Holland did not take part in the World War, it was a great event in her history.
Probably, indeed, a desire to allow Germany no possible pre text for an attempt to occupy the Dutch ports in case of an Anglo German conflict had as much to do with the decision to fortify the mouths of the rivers as any idea that the fortifications might ever actually be used against Great Britain. While English and French newspapers were protesting against this scheme, Holland was also remodelling her system of land defence to excellent effect. The German general staff were so much impressed with these reforms that they thought it necessary to rearrange their plan of operations for the event of a war with France. le rom von Moltke's memoirs it appears that at the time of his predecessor, Von Schlieffen, the German staff intended to violate Dutch as well as Belgian territory, trusting that when they rushed their armies westward through the Dutch province of Limburg (which juts out to the south, covering part of the eastern frontier of Belgium), the Dutch Army would remain inactive behind the "water line," the inundated area, which protects only the western part of the country. Von Moltke, realizing that the Dutch army was made mobile and would be used to strike, even if only the outlying province of Limburg were violated, decided to respect Dutch neutrality, although the detour necessitated by the change of plan would delay the German advance from Crefeld by some precious days.
Holland's attitude, then, in those crucial years was strictly and impartially neutral. The sympathies of the public could less easily be controlled. The memories of the Boer War had already lost much of their bitterness, largely owing to the grant of self government to the late Boer republics and the consequent appeasement in South Africa itself. The economic prosperity of the country was to a certain extent bound up with the tremend ous development of the German hinterland since 187o, but the Dutch people felt oppressed by the militarist temper and the blatant imperialism which appeared to possess their powerful eastern neighbour. On the outbreak of war in 1914, it was the violation of Belgian neutrality and the subsequent acts of repres sion in the occupied territory which made the deepest impression and determined the attitude of Dutch public opinion.
The Government at once proclaimed, and rigidly maintained to the end, strict neutrality. Inevitably there were times when each group of belligerents felt Holland's neutrality, however impartially administered, as a burden. The British navy was able to see to it that Holland did not provide Germany with the food and other materials she wanted from overseas, but the enforcement of the blockade gave rise to a good deal of friction. Moreover, Holland's neutrality undoubtedly had the effect of covering Germany's right flank. On the other hand, the closure of the Scheldt, once Antwerp had fallen, was all to the advantage of Great Britain, as Germany was thus prevented from using Antwerp as a submarine base.
Disputes about particular points were practically continuous, but the sincerity and reality of Dutch neutrality were recognized on both sides, and neither attempted to use violence against Holland. The efficiency of Holland's defense forces contributed to this. The army, 450,000 strong, had been mobilized without a hitch in the last days of July 1914, and was kept on a war footing, at a great cost financially and morally, till 1918. It had to cope with no serious incidents. Some thousands of Belgian and British troops were interned after the fall of Antwerp. German and British aeroplanes sometimes strayed on to Dutch territory. The naval forces occasionally had to intern a submarine or a de stroyer, and to them fell the dangerous work of mine-sweeping along the Dutch coast. The Government carried out its inter national obligations as a neutral with consistent firmness and moderation.
The most real difficulties, however, were economic ; and these began to be of the most tragic importance to the Dutch people in 1915. For Holland international commerce is not a luxury but a necessity. It directly supports an important part of the com munity, Dutch industries are dependent on it for most of their raw materials and their coal, while four-fifths of the grain supply comes from abroad. Seaborne trade was gradually extinguished as the war went on. The Germans began by laying mines in front of the English ports. The British retaliated by laying a minefield in the North sea. In order to make their blockade of Germany effective they exercised an ever more stringent control over im ports into the adjacent states, regardless of the provisions of the Declaration of London. They prescribed to neutral traffic a route along the south coast of England, so as to be able to examine cargoes at leisure. The Germans then prescribed the route round the North of Scotland, and declared the Channel area an area of war. In March 1915 the Entente Powers did away with all dis tinctions between legitimate and contraband trade, and prohibited the import into Holland of all goods, whatever their nature, which could be suspected of being destined for transmission to Germany. All goods imported into Holland had to be consigned to an unofficial body (the Netherlands Oversea Trust), which possessed the confidence of the Entente authorities and undertook that they should go no further.
The Allies gradually assumed control of the entire economic life of Holland, allowing her the bare necessities of life, with holding anything that could be used to replace goods sent to Germany. Even Holland's trade with her own colonies was subject to this control. As Holland depends on Germany for certain indispensable articles, e.g., coal, she was driven to export food which she really could not do without, in order to obtain them in exchange. Meanwhile in 1915 Dutch vessels had begun to fall victims to German U-boats. After the unrestricted sub marine war had been proclaimed early in 1917, practically all overseas traffic ceased. Food scarcity became almost as serious in Holland as in Germany itself, certainly more serious than in England. In the last stages of the war Holland's industrial life was at a complete standstill.
Early in 192o a treaty in which several Dutch concessions were laid down was ready for signature, when a new dispute arose, about the sovereignty of the Wielingen channel, which connects the Schelde estuary with the open sea. Although that channel runs along the Belgian coast within the three-mile limit, Holland had exercised sovereign rights over it since mediaeval times. But, later, when conditions everywhere grew more stable, the treaty of 192o was signed at The Hague on April 3, 1925, without Holland having changed her attitude towards the Wielingen question, which was suffered to remain in its original state, the Belgians basing their claim on the three-mile limit, the Dutch on ancient rights of possession.
Ratification by Holland was, however, delayed by prolonged political crisis; and meanwhile it was subjected to lively criticism. In 1919 and 192o Holland had been willing to make economic concessions to avoid a threat to her sovereign rights; and Van Karnebeek's conduct of the delicate negotiations had been gen erally admired. When in 1925, however, the treaty was at last published in its entirety, the danger which loomed so large five years before seemed altogether negligible, and the proposed con cessions were scrutinized entirely on their merits, wide-spread dissatisfaction manifesting itself at the one-sided character of the treaty. When the Second Chamber on Nov. 11, 1926, never theless approved it, the agitation redoubled in intensity, with the result that on March 24, 1927, the First Chamber, with 33 votes against 17 rejected it.
The years of Coalition Government through which Holland passed after the Armistice can be divided into two very distinct periods. The years 1919 and 192o were feverish ones, when a fallacious sense of prosperity stimulated enterprise in business and politics alike. It is not perhaps unfair to connect the zeal for social reform which characterised those days with a certain nervousness which remained after the "November days" of 1918.
But the fictitious prosperity was succeeded by a severe de pression. Shipping and shipbuilding particularly felt the effects, and no place suffered more from the occupation of the Ruhr area and from the preference granted by France to her own and Belgian commerce than the great port of Rotterdam. When international conditions improved in 1924, economic conditions in Holland soon felt the effect. Yet unemployment remained still a drain on Dutch resources. The one really bright spot in the picture was the prosperity of the East Indian "cultures." Meanwhile, the stress of the times occasioned a radical change in the Government's policy. Economy came to be the cry. The building subsidies were cut down. In order to enable Dutch industry to compete with the countries with debased currencies, dispensations from the act restricting the hours of labour were freely granted. On yet another point a revulsion of feeling mani fested itself against legislation passed almost without opposition a few years previously. The new cabinet of the Right had to carry into practice the general provision of financial equality for denominational education which their predecessors had written into the Constitution. It was now felt that the multiplication of small State-subsidized schools, which resulted from Dr. De Vis ser's (the minister of education 1918-25) measures, overburdened the taxpayer.
During the years 1922-4 Dutch politics centred round the financial situation. In the early summer of 1923 the Government strengthened itself with a new minister of finance, Mr. Colyn, who two years later was to succeed Mr. Ruys in the premiership. Colyn, a strong personality, was expected to carry out a pro gramme of ruthless economy. The prime object of Colyn's severe policy, at all events, was reached: in the course of 1925 the budget was balanced. An improvement in the yield of direct taxation, as a consequence of the economic revival, contributed to this event.
In spite of this success, Colyn's Government soon was unable to carry on. It was freely predicted at the time that the elim ination of the education grievance would soon bring about the dissolution of the Coalition, and that thus the way would be come clear for a more natural grouping of parties on economic and political lines. In Oct. 1923 it was thought that the knell of the Coalition had been sounded when Io Catholics joined the parties of the Left and the bill for the strengthening of the naval defences of the Dutch East Indies was rejected. After a crisis of several months, however, the Coalition was patched up and the elections of June–July 1925 were fought on the old lines. Colyn formed a new Government in July. But a new crisis was occasioned by a motion, introduced by an independent Christian Historical member of the chamber, to abolish diplomatic repre sentation at the Vatican, which had been introduced during the war by the Cort van der Linden Government. The whole Christian Historical Party voted for it, and the motion was carried. The Liberals, Radicals and Socialists, while caring little for the question itself, had voted for the motion in order to show up the unreality of the Coalition. The Catholic ministers in Colyn's cabinet resigned on Nov. 11, 1925, and the next day the premier offered the resignations of himself and all his other colleagues.
Co-operation between the Christian Historicals and the Roman Catholics had now become exceedingly difficult, but the hopes of those who wanted to see the Coalition give way to a new group ing of parties were disappointed. Radicals and Socialists have long aspired to an alliance with the Catholics, among whom democratic tendencies are strongly, although by no means ex clusively, represented. An attempt (Nov. 24–Dec. 1, 1925) on the part of the Radical leader, Marchant, to form a democratic mm istry, however, met with a unanimous refusal from the Catholics, in spite of Marchant's offer to rescind the vote against the Vati can legation. The result was that Dutch parliamentary politics appeared to have reached an absolute deadlock. After a crisis of unprecedented duration, Jonkheer De Geer, therefore, on March 3, 1926 formed a non-parliamentary cabinet with a programme of all-round economy, including reductions in the army and navy and productive State works for the unemployed.
The frequent resort to extra-parliamentary cabinets is a curious feature of modern Dutch politics. It should not be regarded as a reversion to the system of royal government. The system has grave drawbacks, but as long as the numerous parties in the chamber cannot combine, it will probably be indispensable.
The coal fields in S. Limburg were being developed with strik ing success. Amsterdam advanced in importance as an inter national banking centre, while with Rotterdam it counts among the great commercial ports of the continent.
Holland was hard hit by the shrinkage of international trade which began in 1929. In December 1931 the first Crisis Importa tion Act was passed, empowering the government to introduce quotas. At the same time a system of levies was initiated to give financial support to farmers. Armed in 1933 with another Crisis Importation Act, Dr. Colijn, leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, who had shortly before become Prime Minister, negotiated with Great Britain in 1934 for a reduction of British Tariffs, but the negotiations came to nothing. With various other countries trade agreements were concluded.
In home politics, public opinion was greatly exercised at the beginning of 1933 by the mutiny of the crew of a cruiser in East Indian waters, in protest against a pay cut.
A National Socialist movement had been formed, but did not take part in the election of 1933. The result was a success for Dr. Colijn's party.
In forming a government, Dr. Colijn departed from the tra ditional division of parties on religious lines. This government adhered to an orthodox financial policy until on Sept. 27, 1936, following other countries, the currency was devalued.
The growing reputation of Dutch architecture and its influence on the appearance of Dutch towns has already been mentioned. Meanwhile the fame of Dutch science stands very high. No less than 17 Nobel prizes have been won by Dutch scientists.
On Jan. 7, Crown Princess Juliana, only child of Queen Wilhelmina and heir to the throne, was married to Prince Bern hard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, the latter having sworn allegiance to the Queen and having become a naturalized Dutch subject. Lippe Biesterfeld was a small German principality in the days before Germany became a republic.
For the literature of Holland, see DUTCH LANGUAGE AND LITER